I watched the kurzgesagt (https://youtu.be/udFxKZRyQt4) about neutron stars and he explained the inside of the stars are basically just a huge atomic core. But how do we know that? We have a hard time seeing atoms in labs here on Earth, how is it possible to see them light years away?
In: Physics
We don’t know.
Basically, we assume the laws of physics for gravity and quantum physics still apply, and try really hard to figure out some properties.
We think there is a pressure where electron get so compacted that they merge with the protons. We know if that happen that this makes a neutron (as neutron decay into proton+electrons).
We think there is a pressure where neutronium (atoms made exclusively of neutrons) start to pair up, and make di-neutronium soup, because it seems to be slightly more stable than unpaired ones (they don’t like being together, but they take less space so that relieve a little bit of the pressure).
We think there is a pressure where they become pasta (1D chain), then lasagna (2D sheets) and then a core (3D solid), mostly because it looks like 1D neutronium structures are a little bit more stable than 2D neutronium structures which themselves are a little bit more stable than 3D. But at this scale of pressure it’s really speculative.
Below that we have no clue. We don’t know if black holes could spontaneously form then evaporate, or if we can have a weird soup of quarks, or exotic form of matter.
Ideally we would have a record of seismic events at the surface of a neutron star, but that would require direct observation.
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